Tilting at Wind Farms in Northern New York State
Ethics in a small town can be very problematic when one large company with special property interests comes into town. Whether it is a developer, a landfill owner, or other sort of business that seeks to get property or expand its holdings at an inexpensive price, its needs often lead it to tempt individual local government officials or dominate the town's politics.
In Franklin County (northeastern New York State), a new sort of business has been causing local governments ethics problems: wind farm companies. This has been well documented by anti-wind farm groups such as <a href="http://www.windaction.org" target="_blank">www.windaction.org.</a>
It appears that officials in a few small towns entered into contracts, easements, and lease-option agreements with wind farm companies, and did not recuse themselves when decisions involving wind farm companies came before their board or council. It also appears that many of these towns have not required such recusal.
<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/432">Click here to read the rest of this blog entry.</a>
Information about the alleged conflicts has been coming out in recent months, leading to an investigation by the county's district attorney, who has also called for the county code of ethics to be updated and a county board of ethics to be created to oversee a standard code for all county municipalities. The district attorney has said that, in addition to possible ethics problems, there might be crimes of official misconduct or bribery involving public servants.
Due to the publicity and investigations, at least two council members have said they will recuse themselves from all wind farm matters. At least one town has voted to adopt a new code of ethics, which is much more strict than the state requires in its General Municipal Law.
A county board of ethics is a good idea in an area of small towns such as Franklin County. Small towns have a hard time putting together truly independent ethics commissions, and large land matters are hard to deal with, because so many locals can be involved directly (actual and possible land, construction, and other contracts) or indirectly (the effect on their land values and property taxes). They also might have very strong feelings, one way or the other, about the aesthetics or environmental effects of a project (including not-in-my-backyard feelings), which should have no bearing on ethics decisions. Most people in town would effectively, if not legally, have conflicts of interest themselves.
It is sad, however, that companies who enter into contracts with officials can only be held responsible if their contracts are found to constitute bribery, and even then, often only the government official is arrested. When those who tempt officials have nothing to lose, they are effectively being encouraged to undermine local government ethics.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics